First Impressions (Jacques)

The good thing about Matt being a father was that he was more than willing to break Skylar's rules as a mothe . Judah was not allowed to break them, because he was a kid, but his father could so totally persuade her to change Judah's punishment. Of course, he had been punished for staying in the kitchens while the school was burning with spells and all, because his mom had told him again and again that he should have gone straight to his Common Room or asked the Hufflepuffs for asylum. But how was Judah going to walk all the way up to the Gryffindor Tower when there were evil men all over the castle?

His mother wasnt having any of it, though. She had made her mind that Judah had put himself in danger by staying in the Kitchens - with a girl he didn't know, no less! - and she had already sent in more homework and a list of things he had to do before he got home for the summer holidays. Among them was reading fifty books, and Judah wanted to crawl into a ditch until his mom cooled off because this was insane. He liked reading, yes, but FIFTY BOOKS was definitely way too much. He was barely on his ninth book and it had only been two or so weeks after the whole thing had gone down.

He was reading Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, because it was a trippy read. He always figured every writer was probably high on something when they wrote a best selling novel, specially the classics like Alice. Not that Judah knew much about being high, just what his mother adviced him to stay away from. For an eleven year old, he probably knew things he shouldn't, but when one had parents who had friends of all kinds and walks of life...it was easy to know more than the average eleven year old. Flipping the page, Judah continued his read, laid out on the grass of the grounds, some meters away from the edge of the forest. He could see the castle from here, or parts of it, and he liked that view quite a lot.

His eyes lifted from the page and landed on the trees by the entrance to the forest. Whatever was hidden there must be amazing AND dangerous. "I wonder..." he breathed, his voice low and full of curiosity. He almost stood up, because the forest was calling his name, ready to show Judah what everyone talked about. But then he remembered his mother. Skylar already had him doing a bunch of things for being "stupidly brave" and if he went even further than that his mother would certainly have him homeschooled. Out of everything, being homeschooled was probably the worst. Of course, he'd been homeschooled before - but Judah wanted to see more than that.

His thoughts were all over the place now, so he closed his book and took out his wand from his book bag. Seeing as he had a pretty open place, it seemed like the perfect place to practice the fire spell. He shouldn't be practicing that spell, really, he shouldn't even know it, but he already knew the water spell so it seemed reasonable to know the fire one as well. Standing up, Judah pointed his wand at a twig nearby and casted the spell, but merely a golden spark came out. It wasn't even a bunch of sparks, it was just ONE SPARK. Trying not to be discouraged, he tried again, only to get a few more sparks. "Well...it's something." There was a reason Judah preferred Transfiguration to any other branch of magic, and not just because it came so naturally, but because it was simple spells like the fire one that made him doubt his abilities.

As he thought how to make the spell work, a better way to cast it that he probably wasn't aware of, Judah's thoughts disappeared when a voice spoke up. He hadn't even realized he wasn't alone. To say that Judah wasn't concentrating hard enough was the truest thing the other boy could have said. Judah really wasn't concentrating at all. It was, in his defense, incredibly hard to concentrate on one thing when his brain tended to jump from one to the other.

Sighing, Judah replied. "I know." Wait a second. Envisage? Envisage??? What kind of person uses those words?! What does it even mean?! Frowning a little at the fancy word, Judah scratched the back of his neck. "You mean I have to imagine fire coming out of the wand?" It seemed a little weird, but it made sense because that's what he did for Transfiguration. If he wanted to give himself a duck face, all he had to do was imagine it. Though of course, sometimes if his concentration was not good enough he ended with a weird thing on his face.

"Anyway, can you do the fire spell?" Maybe the boy could, and maybe he was just trying to help, but Judah knew that first years weren't allowed to learn that spell. He was a little skeptical, really, because the boy had practically appeared out of nowhere. So quietly that Judah hadn't even noticed his presence. Maybe he was a ghost! Judah casually turned to look at the boy again, but saw nothing indicating he belonged to the unlucky dead.

Contrary to Judah's jeans and plaid, the other boy was dressed much more formally. Maybe he was one of those rich kids at Hogwarts. Judah had always imagined what it would be like to be rich, because his parents were anything but. They had enough to be considered middle class and maybe they would have had more if they didn't spend it all trying to support upcoming artists and musicians. That was mostly Matt's doing, however, because he spent his nights going to local places in order to help young musicians. Not to mention he was always donating art materials to an art school in London. In Judah's opinion, London didn't need money.

"I'm Judah Vizcaíno." he said, extending his hand for the normal handshake greeting. "Don't worry if you can't pronounce my last name. Not many people can." he shrugged. It seemed normal, to greet people that could potentially become friends. Although of course, according to Skylar one couldn't exactly count strangers as friends until they proved their loyalty. It was strange, however, that everything his parents had said before was echoing in the back of Judah's head. He had always thought himself to he an independent thinker, but it seems he paid more attention to what his parents told him than he was aware of.